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.The lad's tether was cut, and soon he and Foryth were standing, flexing their muscles, allowing circulation to reach into the previously deadened parts of their bodies.Their hands remained tightly bound together at the wrists, but at least they could move around, stretching their legs and working the kinks out of their backs."Hurry up there," snapped Kelryn Darewind, striding farther into the cave to address his two captives."We've got to get started.It'll take us all night to get to our next shelter, and I want to be inside by the dawn."Danyal thought the bandit leader seemed jumpy and anxious; he looked over his shoulder for a moment, then stared intently into the shadows at the edges of the cave."Tsk — it'll take a minute just to be able to move again," Foryth said, limping forward, leaning against the cave wall to help him balance.Kelryn glared at the man, and Danyal had a glimmer of terrible fear."I'll give you a hand," the lad offered, stepping to the historian's other side and taking his arm.Together, still hobbling, they made their way to the entrance of the cave.Two of the bandits had already dragged Gnar's corpse away, but the place where he had died was marked by a great smear of blood, and Danyal found his eyes drawn to the place with magnetic inevitability."Lot of blood in a man — or boy, for that matter!" hissed Zack, his breath hot in Danyal's ear as the murderer cackled gleefully."Let's go!" snapped Kelryn, and Zack flipped an angry look at his leader before leading the party out of the cave.Fortunately Foryth had restored the feeling to his legs by the time they reached the rutted road.Under the pale light of a half-full Solinari, they started northward again, climbing along the edge of one of the steep-sided valleys that cut into the heights of the Kharolis Mountains.For several hours, they marched in grim silence.The bandits seemed surly and suspicious, cursing at the unexpected sound of a clattering stone or softly griping at each other about inconsequential matters.Danyal kept quiet, wishing he could just be forgotten, left to himself in this rugged wilderness.Kelryn, who had been leading the band, eventually ambled to the side of the road and waited for the two captives to reach him.He fell into step beside Foryth Teel, regarding the historian with a pensive expression that seemed darkly sinister in the moonlight."I can't help noticing that it seems you have started out on your quest with a rather ill-suited selection of companions and weaponry.What, in fact, do you know of the dangers that might be encountered in these mountains?""Tsk," Foryth replied dismissively."It is the historian's job to record the details of those dangers where they are discovered.It is not my place to do battle, to change the face of Krynn through actions of my own.""Yet you very nearly didn't survive to record that history," replied the bandit."And you should know that I am not the only thing you need to fear in these heights." "And what other manner of danger might we encounter?" Foryth reached for his book, then, apparently deciding that the complications of writing and walking outweighed the need for immediate accuracy, dropped the tome back into his pack."There's a dragon." Danyal spoke boldly, forgetting himself enough that he wanted to contribute to the conversation."Ah, the squire speaks.And he is correct." Kelryn addressed Foryth Teel."I assume that you caught sight of the wyrm in the days before our meeting?""No!" Foryth objected."I would certainly have remembered such an occurrence.""Um, you were asleep," Danyal said, giving the historian a nudge with his elbow."I saw the dragon fly over, but I didn't want to wake you.""What?" Foryth scowled at the lad, and for a moment Danyal had a glimpse of what a real squire might feel like after he had displeased his master."You should always wake me up for a dragon!""Yes, sir.I-I'll make sure I do that," Dan replied, uncertain as to whether the historian was really making a point or simply going along with the youth's story."And was there enough light that you could see the nature of this serpent?" asked Kelryn, turning his own attention to the youth."Yes.It was red—and huge," Danyal said, his voice thickening as he recalled the monster.He wanted to say that it had destroyed his village, flown from the sky to bring ruin and death to innocent Waterton.But he dared say no more, or he would risk revealing the charade of his relationship to Foryth Teel, the utterly fictional relationship with its promise of ransom that seemed to be the only thing currently keeping Danyal alive."You felt the awe?"The lad nodded mutely, remembering the way his guts had seemed to liquefy in his belly at the sight of the monster, hating the tears that welled in his eyes with the memory.Fortunately Kelryn seemed to take his emotions as nothing more than the normal reaction in one who had encountered such an awe-inspiring beast."I suspect you saw the red dragon known as Flayze," the bandit lord declared."He is the bane of these mountains, a bully and predator against elf, dwarf, and man.Wicked to the core, he relishes nothing so much as the slow death of one of his enemies, unless it is gorging himself on a haunch of charred meat.""You know him?" Danyal was amazed to hear the man speak of the serpent with such familiarity."Indeed.He has something that I cherish, that I want very much.Yet even more, I have had cause to hate him for many long years.""What does he have?" asked the youth, only to recoil as Kelryn's eyes went blank and his face lost every hint of emotion.Any thoughts of obtaining further information about that history were blocked by the forbidding expression on Kelryn's face."Always wake me up for a dragon!" Foryth insisted once more, as if distressed that the conversation had proceeded so far without him."Why?" snapped the lad peevishly."Would you try to kill it?""Of course not!" Foryth was horrified."Why, such an act would completely shatter any historian's pretense of neutrality! It's hard to think of anything that could be more disruptive of the proper observer's role.""Not to mention that killing a dragon is far from an easy thing to do," Kelryn noted.Once again his tone was light, and in spite of himself, Danyal felt a flash of relief that the bandit lord's aloof mood had passed so quickly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]